ARWAV Chapter I Notes

A Room with a View * Chapter I – The Bertolini

Who’s Who:
· Lucy Honeychurch
· Miss Charlotte Bartlett
· The Reverend Cuthbert Eager ( M.A. Oxon.)
· The (Cockney) Signora (and her children, ‘Enery and Victorier)
· The Reverend Mr. Beebe
· The Clever Lady (aka Miss Eleanor Lavish)
· Mr. Emerson
· Mr. Emerson’s Son (George)
· Freddy (Lucy’s brother, back home at Windy Corner)
· Baedaker (and, more importantly, his Handbook to Northern Italy)

Initial Questions for Consideration:
· What is the Pension Bertolini, and where is it located?
· Why are Lucy (Honeychurch) and Miss (Charlotte) Bartlett there?
· Who are the other clientele, and where are they from?
· Where and how does the title of the novel come into play?
· What’s the irony of the “Cockney Signora?”

Key Words/Terms in (or of importance to) this Chapter:
· Decorum
· “obligation”
· Beauty vs. Delicacy
· Snub (verb)

Significant/Interesting Quotes for Discussion (most of which reveal the humor in/of the novel):
· “ ‘You must have it,’ said Miss Bartlett, part of whose travelling expenses were paid by Lucy’s mother – a piece of generosity to which she made many a tactful allusion” (3).

· “Miss Bartlett, though skilled in the delicacies of conversation, was powerless in the presence of brutality. It was impossible to snub anyone so gross” (5).

· “The Pension Bertolini had decided, almost enthusiastically, that they would do. Whichever way they looked, kind ladies smiled and shouted at them. And above all rose the voice of the clever lady, crying: ‘Prato! They must go to Prato. That place is too sweetly squalid for words. I love it; I revel in shaking off the trammels of respectability, as you know.’
The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do.”

· [Mr. Beebe speaking of Mr. Emerson] “ ‘He has the merit – if it is one – of saying exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite. It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth’ ” (7).

· [Lucy speaking of Mr. Beebe] “ ‘He is nice,’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘Just what I remember. He seems to see good in every one. No one would mistake him for a clergyman’ ” (8).

· “ ‘About old Mr. Emerson – I hardly know. No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?’
‘Beautiful?’ said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. ‘Are not beauty and delicacy the same?’ ” (9).

· [George Emerson, speaking to Miss Bartlett] “ ‘My father,’ he said, ‘is in his bath, so you cannot thank him personally. But any message given by you to me will be given by me to him as soon as he comes out.’
Miss Bartlett was unequal to the bath. All her barbed civilities came forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable triumph to the delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight of Lucy” (10).

· “It was then that she [Miss Bartlett] saw, pinned up over the washstand, a sheet of paper on which was scrawled an enormous note of interrogation. Nothing more.
‘What does it mean?’ she thought, and she examined it carefully by the light of a candle. Meaningless at first, it gradually because menacing, obnoxious, portentous with evil. She was seized with an impulse to destroy it, but fortunately remembered that she had no right to do so, since it must certainly be the property of young Mr. Emerson. So she unpinned it carefully, and put it between two pieces of blotting-paper to keep it clean for him” (11).